Mendrian posted:

I think we have more to fear from the right going more libertarian/objectivist than somehow trying to usurp the left's talking points. I could see Paul Ryan going full Rand and garnering a lot of support that way. A secular right without an obvious racist leaning could actually be a force to be reckoned with if it could get its act together. I think it would still be stupid but I think a lot of Americans would be ready to eat the boostraps poo poo up with a spoon.

Lightning Knight posted:

You keep ignoring my point. That just makes Trump supporters more Trumpy. It doesn't gain them any new support. And there isn't enough support, that's strong enough, for them to even win an election, let alone mount a fascist revolution, and that's with nominal establishment support.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

Of course, if they don't actually get any new voters they lose.

I just don't think having broadcast media support is all that important in today's world. We might differ on that assumption.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

They've done a pretty good job of convincing the average Trump voter that Infowars is a good news source, so I don't know how much I'm willing to say they can't control a narrative absent an existing media structure like broadcast news.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

Under the financial data section of the paper, the analysis specifically points to the sort of person who has some economic status but is fearful of losing it.

Trump voters aren't guys working the drive thru at McDonald's, they're the guy who manages the McDonald's.

Lightning Knight posted:

So as I said, they can't even win an election. They won't mount a fascist revolution. The worst would be a repeat of OKC, which would be tragic but not the death of the republic.

I think you greatly underestimate the power of the media to define the political discourse in America, trusted or not. If American fascists aren't militant, organized, or numerous enough to mount a self-sustaining revolution, they need the support of the monied elites and media to gain power. Remember, Hitler tried an armed revolt and failed. When he took power, it was because the establishment anointed him in a supposedly ceremonial government role and he was able to take over from within.

Captain Oblivious posted:

You've made a lot of dumb posts about history in the past couple pages but:

The actual best case scenario was that political will survived to see Reconstruction through. It didn't, sadly. All of the alternatives you've proposed would have been varying shades of disastrous.

Northerners by and large believed African Americans should have human rights but not civil rights. Moreover, a large part of their objection to the expansion of slavery was that slaves took up jobs that "more deserving" whites could have had.

Edit: The really hosed up thing about all this is that as much of a mess as America is, we're still somehow better prepared for multiculturalism than everyone else despite it all. As Europe losing their minds at the first blemish of non-white demographics is showing us.

meristem posted:

Yes. Fear in general is the basis of authoritarianism.

Although I think that all this analysis foregoes in general a very major factor, and that is how much Hillary is able to achieve. Because let's pretend for a moment that she manages to restore pork barrel spending, connecting it to green infrastructure. Obviously, each building and each piece of infrastructure repaired or built under this legislation should have a very large notice board on-site saying "this was done thanks to funds from (....)". In a generation or two, this might bring some effect in diminishing the fear of government.

Which is why this election is so really, really important.

gfsincere posted:

On an unrelated note, is it illegal when interviewing someone for a job to ask who they voted for?

Tom Guycot posted:

You know, this brings up something else. What do you honestly do when ~40% of your population believes in conspiracies? Not just right slanted media or something, but outright, flat "this president is a gay terrorist lizzard, who's the antichrist and is plotting to destroy America with chemtrails!"

How the gently caress do you ever turn that around? Come back to normal? What the gently caress is going to happen as that keeps getting more and more ingrained? Just wait for them to die? Well that might work except all you have to do is look at the alt-right to see how that poo poo isn't falling off with a younger generation.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

I'm trying to avoid comparing this movement to the Nazi movement.

If you want to get a party with this sort of platform into power, you're confident you can do it. Why? Because no one rejected the platform outright when it was brought to light. That's the important bit in the whole equation.

The media was covering Trump as a serious candidate all through the process until he got lovely with them. If he never pulls his dumb press conference stunt, he'd be fine through the debates unless he immolated himself.

The rejection is not of the platform, the rejection is of the candidate.

Lightning Knight posted:

Which represents a fundamental failure of for profit news media.

I mean, remember, at this point establishment conservatives are fascists with money to burn. Of course the platform is indistinguishable. Conversely, anybody the establishment will consider respectable enough to run will not command the fervent loyalty somebody like Trump does. It's their Catch 22.

Meanwhile, worry less about fascist revolts and more about the banal evil of a possible Republican president in 2020 or 2024, because that's a hell of a lot more likely.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

I think the problem with this line of thinking is that you're assuming Republicans care about ideological purity in the face of winning.

Reince bent the knee. They don't give a drat running anyone they can get their hands on if the establishment thinks they have a shot at winning.

Lightning Knight posted:

They didn't pick Trump, though. They wanted Jeb!, or Rubio. They worked with what they had once it was forced upon them, but they didn't just roll over and die. Or at least, they attempted and failed not to.

You're assuming the Republicans don't make rules to shut out future Trumps. Maybe they don't. Maybe they're that stupid. But I really rather doubt that. Republicans are evil, not stupid, and they do what they feel necessary to protect their power.

Lightning Knight posted:

They didn't pick Trump, though. They wanted Jeb!, or Rubio. They worked with what they had once it was forced upon them, but they didn't just roll over and die. Or at least, they attempted and failed not to.

You're assuming the Republicans don't make rules to shut out future Trumps. Maybe they don't. Maybe they're that stupid. But I really rather doubt that. Republicans are evil, not stupid, and they do what they feel necessary to protect their power.

gfsincere posted:

If they would have given us a couple of states and couched it as "kicking us out" to the rest of America, we could have gave nary a gently caress about what rights white people felt like we should have had, as it would have been wholly irrelevant as a separate entity, which comically enough in 2016 in America we don't truly have human or civil rights as black people yet.

Mendrian posted:

I think we have more to fear from the right going more libertarian/objectivist than somehow trying to usurp the left's talking points. I could see Paul Ryan going full Rand and garnering a lot of support that way. A secular right without an obvious racist leaning could actually be a force to be reckoned with if it could get its act together. I think it would still be stupid but I think a lot of Americans would be ready to eat the boostraps poo poo up with a spoon.

Lightning Knight posted:

Republicans are evil, not stupid, and they do what they feel necessary to protect their power.

lozzle posted:

Debatable, really. They could have nipped this Trump poo poo in the bud if they had done even the most rudimentary oppo...or not ran a billion bozos who decided to take shots at each other and not the proto-fascist.

gfsincere posted:

lozzle posted:

For your -ing pleasure, I present: A Defense Of Rape By the Deplorable Scott Adams.

quote:

It’s a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa.

gfsincere posted:

Nah, I think they are pretty goddamn stupid if your solution to the Romney loss is Trump.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

They had their shot to jump off the Trump Train and they stayed on. That pact was made with their voting bloc that they would stand behind their candidate, and if they go "Whoops, sorry!" when they get another candidate who doesn't fit their ideological biases they lose all credibility with their voting bloc and kill the Republican party over night.

Lightning Knight posted:

That wasn't their solution though. Jeb! was. Which is a fascinating decision that seems stupid, and perhaps is in the literal sense. But to me, it more reflects that they literally live in a completely different, evil reality where they really can just snap their fingers and make all of us sad plebs get down and kneel before them. Perhaps that and stupidity are only different in the academic sense, but I feel it's an important distinction because if they were stupid, they wouldn't learn from this. We shall see if that is the case.


The entire Republican Party is based on double think and lies to accommodate clear stupidity and build alternate realities. You think Republicans won't just fall the gently caress in line when it comes down to it? Go look at the Freep thread, and see a bunch of sad fools who talk big games about how this or that primary challenger is the best and this other one is evil, but if the evil one wins they get behind them right quick.

The Republican Party dies when its base dies, not when they get wise. If they were capable of that, they wouldn't be Republicans.

lozzle posted:

Debatable, really. They could have nipped this Trump poo poo in the bud if they had done even the most rudimentary oppo...or not ran a billion bozos who decided to take shots at each other and not the proto-fascist.

Kilroy posted:

By 2030 the center of gravity of American politics will have shifted left enough that any party trying to play at building some kind of right-wing big-tent coalition will be totally DOA. Either the GOP is going to die and be replaced by a more centrist party, or it's going to move to the center and push the Democrats further left, but either way two decades from now the "centrist" party winning the elections will look an awful lot like the Clinton-Bernie coalition we got out of the DNC this year. The political right will be populated by the sort of people who walk around college campuses with little pamphlets annoying the poo poo out of people trying to get to class, and little else.

Captain Oblivious posted:

There's no universe in which an ethnic majority is going to kick their own kind out of territory they just took by force of military action and give it to an underclass they only barely consider to be people. And even if they did, it would almost certainly result in such a rump state being treated exploitatively at best. You're imagining some kind of land of opportunity, I'm telling you that even in the fantasy land where the basic assumption comes true it'd have just been a reservation.

And that's without even getting into issues like "why would a bunch of newly emancipated slaves having total control of some tiny rump state fare any better than the politically and economically integrated southern states did in actual history (read: not well, and for the most part still doing really poorly)?"

Penisaurus Sex posted:

I don't think that the establishment is driving the bus anymore, honestly. Which might be a little worrying, especially if Trump comes out of this as some kind of kingmaker with the power to sway the primary via his endorsement. Bit of a stretch, but he has a pretty crazy cult of personality going on around him right now.

Lightning Knight posted:

Bleh. The stink of loser will strangle Trump's cult of personality soon enough, and he's only really in it for the money and the fame. He'll slink off like Palin and move on to the next big thing and they'll vote David Duke to be the nominee instead of Cruz in 2020.

gfsincere posted:

40 acres and a mule times 6 million people is 240 million acres. That's a whole lot of land if the government had of gone through with that.

gfsincere posted:

Probably the same way black people did well economically without any rights, capital, and dealing with massive racism until jealous white people burned all their poo poo down in 1919 like in Tulsa.

Just saying.

Ever think the southerners couldn't get poo poo going because *surprise* other people had been doing the work the whole time, and maybe the people who were forced to work 14-18 hours a day maybe had a bit better work ethic than those that weren't forced to do that?

40 acres and a mule times 6 million people is 240 million acres. That's a whole lot of land if the government had of gone through with that.

gfsincere posted:

Probably the same way black people did well economically without any rights, capital, and dealing with massive racism until jealous white people burned all their poo poo down in 1919 like in Tulsa.

Just saying.

Lightning Knight posted:

Bleh. The stink of loser will strangle Trump's cult of personality soon enough, and he's only really in it for the money and the fame. He'll slink off like Palin and move on to the next big thing and they'll vote David Duke to be the nominee instead of Cruz in 2020.

Penisaurus Sex posted:

The second part of this is a bit revisionist history.

I remember hearing from various people in my life who kind of had a handle on the pulse of the GOP that this was their strongest primary field ever. Sounds ridiculous now, but it was true at the time. The establishment had 6 bullets to take out Trump and figured that they'd hit with one of them, and in the process they torpedoed the political career of every legitimate candidate for 2020.

Except Kasich I guess, but the 'recently divorced father who goes to the zoo' bloc isn't very big.

Lightning Knight posted:

I would posit that black people were successful because they were operating within the framework of the US economy in a place that needed to be rebuilt in part using US Government resources after the war. In your scenario, no US money is going to rebuild the new black state, and trade relations would be abysmal with who knows how many revanchist whites demanding war to retake the land. I would imagine something closer to Haiti than a black revival, remembering that Haiti failed because of white anomosity as well.

Even in the fantasy framework you've laid out, which I accept for the sake of a thought experiment, you're have to change so many things in relation to reality that it would stop being a useful model of hypothetically plausible counterfactuals.

FAUXTON posted:

The cult that Palin got rolling is what gave rise to Trump. The GOP will eventually have to reckon with the filth they've created but if they survive this election as anything short of a lungshot rump party shredded by an internal civil war then they'll come out of it thinking it was all about the messaging.

Kilroy posted:

By 2030 the center of gravity of American politics will have shifted left enough that any party trying to play at building some kind of right-wing big-tent coalition will be totally DOA. Either the GOP is going to die and be replaced by a more centrist party, or it's going to move to the center and push the Democrats further left, but either way two decades from now the "centrist" party winning the elections will look an awful lot like the Clinton-Bernie coalition we got out of the DNC this year. The political right will be populated by the sort of people who walk around college campuses with little pamphlets annoying the poo poo out of people trying to get to class, and little else.